Sunday, June 10, 2007

[political blogging] the rough with the smooth

One thing I admire about Iain Dale is that while he gives plenty of stick, he also accepts a lot in the rough and tumble of political blogging.I know this because three times he has written to me, once after I posted a scurrilous post about the Dale 100 Awards and he was more than gracious every time.

In fact he was a gentleman.Plus he almost always keeps his comments open. That's sheer class in my book.

Sometimes though, the low-lifes who also infest the net get under the guard and that's the case with his Louise Bagshaw post.One can only go off and lick one's wounds, then come back fighting again.

But it's not only Iain.Another who has had the rough end of the stick, whilst being a bit willing himself, is the inimitable Mutleythedogsdayout, [pity there's no big pic of the dog], who had someone impersonate a blogfriend of his and abuse him in a not entirely articulate way.

So far, I've only been lucky enough to score the one piece of abuse and it went straight into my Testimonials in the sidebar.I'm hopeful there'll be some more from certain very disgruntled quarters after Wednesday evening.

In fact I'm predicting something's going to be posted about me [I think they have something up their sleeve] which will shame me in your eyes forever. You see, behind the scenes I'm playing hardball right now and it's only fair they get their shot later. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.If they don't do it, I'll tell you about it anyway.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I didn't see any abuse. Dale made the point that Bagshawe got stick on ConHome and seemed perplexed why. Several of his readers(in fact most who commented in the thread) pointed out the reasons for Bagshawe's unpopularity in the Party - namely her lack of loyalty, her personal ambition, and her lack of any political service to the party. Dale had a hissy fit and closed the thread. He then deleted any opinion on the subject which differed from his own on any other thread. His excuse seemed to be because he was mates with Bagshawe. Very good.

I find him to be very thin skinned and remarkably intolerant of opinions that are different from his own. For someone who chimes on so much about freedom of speech and the so-called Stalinism of PM to be McBroon, he does delete a lot of posts under the cover "abuse". When I read them BEFORE deletion, they appear to simply differ from his views or question the credentials of his fellow A-listers. Does Dale think the A-list is beyond criticism? If he does then he is in for a big shock because anyone I know thinks it is a complete nonsense, and is determined to vote against any of them to end the ridiculous project.

I didn't get to Dale in time to see waht was going on on the Bagshawe post but I can well imagine that some nasty things were said. Some of Dale's commenters are unpleasant- much more so than him- and especially unpleasant about women.

As to Dale personally I think he does what he does very well- he isn't a great political thinker, nor is he the be all and end all of bloggers but as a good gossip blogger he succeeds in providing titbits from Westminster and he writes well- you don't go to him for profound thoughts but for a snippet of information you didn't know.

I wouldn't mind guessing the reason for playing hardball, James and in this case, it is probably acheiving the right results.

Bearing in mimd, that things that needed to rescued from those who would prloin them to serve as their own marketing campaign, and that rescue operation seems to have solidified, it is only to be expected that some rearguard is action on a personal level will be taken by these underhand social misfits.

We are more likely to laugh at their embittered petulence than take their mud for anything other than what it is.